Cathie Wood has a lot riding on Tesla.
The founder, CEO and chief investment officer of the hedge fund
Ark Invest has holdings spread out across the tech sector, with a
focus on forward-looking investments that she believes are close
to reaching their full potential.
Tesla (TSLA) is by far the biggest bet with a weighted average of 8.63%,
well above any of the other 107 combined holdings across Ark’s
six ETFs. The next-biggest holding is Roku with a weighted
average of 5.36%.
Related: Tesla faces another lawsuit after $323 million Autopilot verdict
She has stuck with the company through thick and thin.
So far
Tesla is down more than 15% year to date in 2025, but Wood has
only increased her holdings in the company, steadfast in the
belief that Robotaxi will be a trillion-dollar moneymaker for the
company within the next decade.
Tesla already has a market cap over $1 trillion, and that’s despite
falling sales and cratering brand loyalty. So if Tesla Robotaxi can
account for as much as 12.5% of the total addressable market
like Wood believes, then investors would be wise to hold on to
their Tesla shares, just like Ark has.
But seeing is believing, so Frank Downing and Sam Korus, two of
Ark’s research directors, filmed themselves taking a field trip (or a
“real world use case,” as Korus puts it) in the Robotaxi in Austin.
Ark Invest takes a wild ride in Tesla Robotaxi
The first thing you notice in the ARK video is the phallic nature of
Tesla’s geofenced service area.
This isn’t a coincidence. It is the
doing of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who joked about it recently.
“As some may have noted, we have already expanded our
service area in Austin. It’s bigger and longer, and it’s going to get
even bigger and longer,” the 54-year-old Silicon Valley tech
genius told investors during the company’s second-quarter
earnings call.
Related: Tesla lands in more hot water over Elon Musk’s Full Self Driving claims
The next thing you notice is that it takes 12 minutes for their
Robtaxi to arrive. Business Insider recently reported that their
Waymo’s autonomous vehicle took about 7 minutes to arrive on
average.
But that’s all before they get in the car.
Once they do, the next thing you notice is the safety monitor
sitting in the front passenger seat (this becomes important later in
the video). He is legally required to be there, but it seems kind of
awkward to have a complete stranger in the car who isn’t there to
drive.
After being dropped off at their destination five minutes away, the
pair switch to another Robotaxi and speak about how there are
40,000 traffic deaths annually and how autonomous driving will save
so many lives because “It’s not ‘Can it reach human level?’ It
certainly will reach human level. I would argue that if you had FSD
running on all cars, it would be safer. Human as a benchmark is
the wrong benchmark,” according to Korus.
And that’s when the video gets ironic.
Tesla Robotaxi once again proves it’s not safer than an average human driver
Our Ark hero Frank Downing gets into a third Robotaxi (it’s easy to keep track, since the safety monitor keeps changing), and that’s when the
trouble starts.
The autonomous vehicle pulls into the left turning lane on a two-way street before it glitches and starts jerking aggressively, as if it
didn’t know what to do next.
The video is edited after that, but from what can be gathered, the
safety monitor turns on the hazard lights and calls for live support, as Tesla Robotaxis are designed for remote supervision.
The vehicle is stuck in the left turning lane despite being
otherwise fully operational, as the passenger and monitor wait
for tech support.
We don’t know how much time elapses while
they are stuck in this prone position.
Support tried to allow the autonomous vehicle to finish the ride on
its own, but the robot wasn’t having any of that.
Eventually, support instructs the safety monitor to finish the ride, so the human driver gets out of the passenger seat and hops into the driver’s seat.
The video below is timestamped so you can see for yourself.
Tesla Robotaxi is meant to be safer than a human driver
Unfortunately, Korus was no longer along for the ride when
Downing’s Robotaxi glitched in the middle of turning left, so he
wasn’t able to witness the folly of his hubris.
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Humans have a tough time turning left, too. The National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration says that 36% of all automobile
accidents occur at intersections and nearly half a million involve vehicles turning left.
But this isn’t the first video of a Robotaxi struggling with a routine traffic situation, or of FSD driving in the wrong lane.
Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance program has come under
heavy scrutiny in recent weeks, as high-profile cases involving
Autopilot and FSD make their way through court.
So before Ark boasts about the autonomous future, there seems to be a lot of work to do in the present.
Related: Tesla’s latest move could make it tougher to sell more Cybertrucks
